India must go the Japanese way if it wishes to prevent cyber attacks on the country’s massive IT infrastructure, says Avast Antivirus chief technical officer and executive vice-president Ondrej Vlcek.
“Japan brought in a stringent regulatory mechanism last year to put its IT infrastructure under a protective shield. India can also follow that example considering the growing internet penetration in the country,” Mr. Vleck told The Hindu on the sidelines of RISE 2018, Asia’s largest technology conference which got underway here on Tuesday.
He said that over 60% of the personal computers in India were vulnerable to cyber crimes. As many as 18% of routers, 17% phones, 14% printers, 25% network associated storages, 4% security cameras and 2% media boxes too were vulnerable to threats in India. In comparison, only 9% of personal computers, 3% phones, 25% of routers, 16% of printers and 23% of security cameras in Japan were under threat.
The situation was not rosy in Hong Kong either, where about 45% of personal computers were vulnerable to cyber attacks. The percentage for China, the U.S. and Singapore were 39%, 38% and 33% respectively, he said.
“Already most countries are taking precautionary steps specially when it comes to hardware devices. But government-enabled regulations can prevent cyber crimes with the growth of Internet of Things (IoT),” he said.
“Your smart home is only as secure as its weakest link. Personal data leakage and ransomware attacks lead to IoT botnets and physical security threats,” he said.
Incidentally, Artificial Intelligence (AI) will play a key role in IoT safety. In future, AI will identify malicious and legitimate behaviour, Mr. Vleck said.
(The writer is currently in
Hong Kong attending
RISE 2018 tech summit) .
